Stray (30 page)

“I never met her,” he says.

I keep my eyes on the photo, sifting through replies for something that won’t come off judgy or bitter or accusing. “April was the best.”

Hesitating, he says, “Miriam spoke highly of her.”

It catches my attention like a glimmering lure. My head turns, my needy questions rising through dark water. Is it an invitation? Is he opening a door for me? But allowing one question to surface will only trouble hundreds more from the deep and it’s hardly the time or place. Just one, I think, and my mouth starts without me. “You, um … talked to Miriam a lot?”

He does this thing with his eyebrow, a considering sort of undulation like he’s weighing his reply, testing its quality. “No. Only at the beginning and later when this all started.”

I assume the “beginning” was their three months together. The “all” must be me Sparking and unearthing my psychotic twin, but I’m staggered and immediately exceed my question quota. “You didn’t see her for seventeen years?”

His expression closes in, not so much defensive as cautious. “I saw her at the handover of your brother to the Templars. Several years later at an Assembly in the UK. Then last year to witness a Sanctioned Affiliation Ceremony.”

It’s a carefully delivered list, stripped of inflection. I’m taken aback and I can’t help searching his stern face for some sign of emotion. “Three times? In seventeen years?” Before I can help myself I ask, “Did you love her?”

His brow gathers and he drops his gaze. “Love is neither useful nor relevant.”

“Don’t go Spock on me.” My voice wobbles. “I’m not asking
much
.”

He stares at the floorboards between us and finally says, his voice gruff, “I did … I do.”

“It wasn’t just the Synergist thing?”

“You say that as if it were some parasitic override.”

“Isn’t it?” And I’m not sure if I mean to imply that I think it is. It’s what I’ve feared, that my feelings for Jamie are simply a chemical reaction, artificially induced for the mercenary practicalities of passing on the synthetic gene. Miriam had said it herself, admittedly in the throes of a tirade,
a Petri dish experiment, not a relationship
.

“You do not understand the function of the synthetic gene,” he says, somehow avoiding making his words sound condescending. “It draws, unlocks and amplifies what is inside you. Your natural affinity. Yes, there is code in your telepathic signature that will always look for its match, but it is more complicated than that. The strength of the Synergist link is fed by your choices, values, experiences, tastes, emotional and psychological development. There are environmental factors.”

Hearing all this doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me sad and suddenly I’m thinking of Miriam’s years of singleness. “I used to wonder why she never went on dates.”

“She could have.”

“Not that I ever heard of.”

“She would have told you?”

“We used to talk about everything before all this.”

He doesn’t respond though his expression softens.

“Would you have minded if she had?” I ask. “Seen other people, I mean.”

Again that drawing in, caution. “I would always want Miriam to be happy, but I accept that I robbed her of that choice where love is concerned.”

“What do you mean, robbed?”

Colour grows in his face, not an outright blush, but evidence of discomfort. “When Synergists …
bond
… it is a permanent synchronic act, an imprinting that alters and fuses their signals.”

“What, so she could never love someone else?”

“She could love … but there would be no … desire for that person.”

I gape at him, and glance back up the hall, lowering my voice. “So, no sex?”

Now, he really blushes. “I did not say that. Sex would be possible but lacking in … devoid of …”

“You’ve never been with anyone else?” I blurt.

His face darkens. “That is none of your business.”

“It is if I have half-siblings.”

He pulls me into the room and closes the door, thunder booming overhead. “Do not speak of such things.”

I yank my arm from his hold, flushed at my petty goading.

“You think anything would have kept me from you or your mother if total secrecy was not necessary?”

“How would I know?” It comes out with a feral rush of feeling I’m not prepared for. I have to blink away tears. What’s wrong with me?

He exhales through his nose. “You want to go and look at that tormented girl on the couch, with her skin bleached to chalk, and tell me I did the wrong thing. Tell me everything your mother and I have done to keep you safe was worth nothing.”

I don’t argue. I steady my voice. “You think they’d take me now? At this age, they’d try to use me like they use her?”

“You met Robert,” Tesla says. “Can you doubt it?”

“She said she was five when they started.”

“It is true they might not use you in the same way.” He briefly closes his eyes as though forcing himself to stay calm. “But you would be their property.”

“
I’m already their property
.” Again that fierce rush. “Go ahead - count their marks on my body.”

A small flinch in his brow. “There are still choices. They may not seem like much, but they are choices. I have worked since you and your brother were born to find other choices.”

He means the Deactivation Program, which I’ve single-handedly ruined, but I don’t want to acknowledge that I understand what he’s getting at because that brings Jamie into the conversation more pointedly than Tesla’s lesson on Synergists. Grief compresses my chest, a bruising, irresistible weight that makes it hard to draw a full breath. Helena. Jamie’s hands on a pale blue blouse. Sandy hair spilling over delicate bare shoulders. My stomach doesn’t twist with jealousy. I’m tired of hating a shadow.

I realise then that though I had feared my actions would drive Jamie from me, and his stony, back-turned silence in the kitchen was proof of my success in that, there’s still a deep-down part of me banking on our Synergist link to bring him back. A fail-safe. What a hypocrite. One minute loathing the idea that our love – our link – is a test tube invention and the next I’m hoping it can override his disgust and force him to still want me. Though “love” might be a stretch where Jamie’s feelings are concerned, now that things have changed. I groan and rub my face. “He could still deactivate, right? Jamie, I mean. Even though Robert’s shut things down?”

“He could.”

I nod. An ounce or two of worry lifting from the weight in my stomach. The rain grows louder on the roof and static louder in my head. The house feels crowded and I’m desperate for peace. “I want to lie down. My head hurts.”

He looks at me with his dark eyes, rubs the back of his neck. There’s a moment where I think he’ll press his point but he lets it go. Instead, he nods, opens the door and walks out.

I go to the window, nudge the curtain aside to blink at myself and the storm. Sighing, I lie back across the narrow bed, my head dropping over the side, giving me an upside-down view of the hall and ceiling. I close my eyes and a weird burst of static produces a strange image in my mind. My face. It appears like a light flicked on and off again in the dark. I rub my temples and open my eyes, staring at the ageing paintwork, the chipped edge of the trap to the attic space, the dangling cord and ring for pulling down the hidden stairs. I rake back over my conversation with Tesla, all my stupid, goading words … the dangling cord and ring. It happens again, the weird burst of static and the image of my face.

My breath stops. The hidden stairs. My fingers stiffen on my brow. An old familiar prickling awakens in my spine. Needles, pins. A slow question uncurling in the back of my brain, an impossible seed of possibility. The attic.

No.

Obviously no.

No for all the reasons.

No for the up-ending, blindsiding stupidity.

Aiden is
not
signalling me from the attic.

Aiden is not in the attic.

Neither is Kitty.

Not in the attic with six Shields and a telepath oblivious beneath because that would be too ridiculous, and impossible, and because of all the reasons.

I listen.

The static is so bad I can’t hear voices in the other room. Aiden can’t possibly be signalling me through it. I can’t even feel Jamie’s signal from here.

Shit.

Aiden
.

I brace myself and reach into the bandwidth. Full-volume static screams into my head, making me gasp. The interference is agonising, disorientating, but I don’t stop reaching. Squinting through a blizzard, afraid to see, to feel, anything …

Aiden?

A strobe flash – his face in my mind – and then it’s gone.
God, oh God
. Was it him?

Aiden? Aiden?

Nothing, just the blizzard, deafening and all the more frightening after the moment of recognition, but I’m sure that quarter-second flash was something. I’d touched something.

I send his name like a shout into the bandwidth,
Aiden!

His face – a strobe burst.

My body thrills with energy. The shock of it through my system propels me to my feet and across the room to the doorway where I freeze, eyes laser-locked on the ceiling trap.

Logic shouts against the certainty in my body. It doesn’t make any sense. There was no heat signature. Davis said so. Besides which, they were never meant to stay. They can’t have stayed. Not here. That wasn’t the plan. They were – not they, just Aiden –
he
was supposed to take the jeep and keep moving and the jeep’s gone … but the house wasn’t cold when we arrived … the power was on.

No. Benjamin searched the house. He must have checked the attic. The ceiling trap is obvious. Right in the middle of the hall. The cord hanging down. He wouldn’t have skipped it … would he? Tesla told him to search. Benjamin’s a protocol guy.

He destroyed the blood sample.

The idea of Aiden and Kitty hiding in the attic is alarming. The idea of Benjamin knowing and hiding the truth is worse. Maybe he tampered with the scanner in the van. Or Davis did and they’re in on it together. But why wouldn’t they say anything? What possible reason? Wouldn’t they have told Tesla?

I can’t think straight.

None of it feels right. Thunder explodes directly overhead. I’m paralysed by indecision. Do I call out? Tell them it’s safe to come down? Warn Tesla first? Just pull the ladder and go up there myself? They’d hear that in the kitchen. They’d come. Demand to know what I was doing. What if Aiden freaks out? Tries to run? Davis and Benjamin would chase him down. What if Aiden fought? They’d hurt him. What if Kitty got in the way? I don’t reach for Kitty’s signal – if Aiden’s here where else would she–?

“Evie?”

My eyes snap down from the ceiling trap and there’s Jamie at the end of the hall.
Shit
. How long has he been standing there? He looks up at the ceiling, his frown shifting gear with sudden hard lines, suspicion parting his lips. Three strides bring him to me, his look drilling, demanding, ready to believe. Ready to react. Ready to tear the house apart.

I grip his wrist, weld my finger to my lips and hold my breath at the exquisite surge of tingling up my arm, through my chest, to my belly.
Oh boy
. I check to see if anyone follows him from the living room. No one comes.

Meeting his dark gaze I give one tremulous nod.

Jamie seizes both my arms, clamping above my elbows, confronting me with his strength and urgency. “She’s here?”

Blinking rapidly at the “she”, my mouth opens and closes. Of course, that would be his question, “she” not “he”. He wants his sister. “I felt Aiden,” I barely give air to my voice. “But I think she must be.”

“Is she or not?” More growl than whisper, his grip so tight it hurts me.

I wince and try to pull away.

His expression flickers with shame and he loosens his hold a notch. “I’m sorry. Please, please try again.” He looks upwards, his chest swollen with an incomplete breath. “Use me. Use my signal.”

“Jamie, wait. Think. It doesn’t make sense. Benjamin must have checked up there. Could he have missed them?”

His expression clouds. “I don’t know.”

“If he knows, why wouldn’t he say?”

Stalled, he draws his shoulders up, impatient, searching. “Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe Davis checked up there. Davis is useless.”

“Davis emptied the van. Benjamin checked the house. Why would he not let on? It doesn’t make sense.”

Jamie’s focus draws inwards, wrestling the hard edges of the puzzle. “Nothing showed on their scanner.”

“You think they tampered with it?”

His expression grows grim. “If it’s a deliberate cover-up, it won’t be good news for your brother.”

My panic flares then I catch a shadow of movement at the end of the hall. Benjamin. It’s Benjamin! Fear slices through me – caught whispering and furtive beneath the ceiling trap. Is he on to us? I move fractionally out of his line of sight and widen my eyes at Jamie in warning, mouthing Benjamin’s name. Understanding flashes across Jamie’s face but he doesn’t turn. He gives me a hard uncertain look then pulls me against him, his lips crashing into mine. A grinding, sparks flying, hammer-to-anvil kiss with no courtesy oxygen.

It’s a cover, buying time, creating a smokescreen. I know it. I do … but still, his heat and scent and signal hit me like a stupefying sensory overload.

I’m vaguely aware he’s released my arms. They feel like they could float up over my head like that game kids play when they stand in a doorway and push outwards as hard as they can for a minute and then step forwards and their arms actually do float up. I can’t tell if mine are doing this but his arms are busy crushing my waist, ribs, back, making it their business to eradicate all pockets of air in and between us. Who needs oxygen?

He pounds me with kisses. My whole body rings.

I finally remember I should do something with my hands, contribute to the ruse, make it convincing. Trouble is my body is convinced, totally, haplessly convinced, and there’s a simultaneously joyous and agonising riot going on with all my lust-lorn hormones charging through the surface of my skin. And I wish it were real. Real and true. Unburdened. Untainted. All of him still wanting me like this.